Just reading the first four (I think the 2nd link is/was broken?)... can't stomach any more... I'm afraid my vote is that it is not parody. I've seen too many people be that seriously stupid.

I'm with Michael. That guy is serious and scary. He's angry and obsessed -- bad combination.

And yeah, the 2nd link is FUBARed. It's got this site's url appended to the BB url.

MKK

Yeah, I'm afraid I've been reading it as the (regrettably) real thing as well.

My parody detector is usually pretty reliable, and he's not setting it off at all.

The lunatic in question sounds remarkably like Michael Savage. Maybe he's hoping for a syndicated talk show?

Do the lurkers support him in email?

For what it's worth--and I didn't read the whole thread, which undercuts my opinion--"Iva Biggrudge" reads as serious to me, too. If this is a parody, it would almost have to be of the "create an entire false personality and inhabit it" variety . . . sort of Andy Kaufman on line. That's possible, of course--but since part of the goal of that sort of parody is to convince at least some people that it is real, I think I'd just throw up my hands at that point.

Wow. And I just wrote a line of dialogue in a short story "Why are people so damn dumb?"

I'll just wander away, make another cup of tea and despair of the human race.

Someone who does a perfect imitation of a troll is a troll, no matter what s/he believes "IRL."

This person* is a real wacko. A parodist would make it funny, or at least put in a couple of in-jokes as flags.

In other words: It's possible this is a hoax, but it's certainly not parody. Mind you, I don't think this is a hoax, either. I think this person is a wacko, home-schooled by wackos in wackoness.

*Either the writer hirself or the character s/he's flawlessly portraying, and it fundamentally doesn't matter.

I have to agree with the consensus that this is a genuine nut, despite the suspiciously good spelling and syntax.

My vote is for literate but serious idiot.

I'm voting not a parody. I avoid the creationism/evolution debates on

BB for a reason. He's got the in-jokes and keywords for the ID/evangelical side of things but not evolution, and while I can't put a finger on any one phrase that does it, the in-group programing I've still got puts him firmly in that camp.

Another vote for him being a real crazyationist. There's something about the way he randomly drops in the anti-gay and anti-Catholic nuttery that just rings true.

Mary Frances @7 nailed it for me with the Andy Kaufman connection. If this is a simulation, it's running in a system indistinguishable from (and is just as disturbing as) the real thing. *shudder*

I'm with the consensus so far: Not parody.

He sounds identical to all the other vocal creationists online. There's nothing to set him aside as being absurdist.

I'd vote for genuine, or as Xopher says, a hoax, not a parody, because of the total lack of winking.

Does anyone know if that weird anti-Semitism argument a common one among ID people? Because that was the point at which I started boggling.

Reading this stuff is hard--on one hand, with the ink-is-still-wet "Dr." I can now put at the beginning of my name, I feel like I should put that official-sounding title to good use by helping my fellow scientists deal with this junk (particularly as there is a dearth of religion vs. reason type arguments out there about materials science*, so I don't get kept busy with arguments in my own field.) On the other hand, what's the point of trying to educate willful ignorance with an open heart? Even dipping my toe in Creationist arguments just frustrates me too much to even respond.

*Maybe I should start one. Hmm. Implausibility of available technology being able to build the Ark of the Covenant as literally described?

TChem@16: I am now genuinely curious. Would the Ark have required advanced materials to build? It doesn't seem on the face of it to be a particularly complex design.

I'm with xopher at #9: As Vonnegut says in Mother Night, "Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be."

>>Does anyone know if that weird anti-Semitism argument a common one among ID people? Because that was the point at which I started boggling.

I've certainly heard it before, although more as a snide remark than with the vigour assault displayed here, that had Hitler not come across Darwin's work he would have never started his final solution.

As someone who's lived in the Bible Belt most of her life, I would have assumed immediately that those comments were serious.

Another vote for crazy. There aren't many parodists good enough to hit the tone spot-on like that, and the ones who are good enough generally are also good enough to, well, make it work as humor. Also, the pattern of engagement -- who they responded to and when -- doesn't feel like a parodist. It feels like someone seriously obsessed, not like someone who's having fun.

Does anyone know if that weird anti-Semitism argument a common one among ID people? Because that was the point at which I started boggling.

Well, it depends on who you count as ID people. I know some folk who thought weak-version ID* philosophy was just fine...about six years ago.** Like anything else that lends itself to obsessive nerdiness, it attracted the usual suspects pretty fast, nutters, paranoid conspiracists, and leaving the main sequence for the red-giant Godwin phase, having consumed all the hydrogen rational intellect of it's earlier followers.

*weak version ID in a nutshell: If you already believe in God, then it is reasonable, and even "obvious" to conclude that the cool/nifty/orderly phenomena that you encounter by doing science illustrates how cool He is. Pretty simple Premise -> Conclusion stuff. The less logical types reverse the equation leading to Conclusion -> Premise, because it's soooo 'obvious.' It's not too far to classical Creationism and nuttiness from here. And yes, I am aware of examples that completely demolish even the reversed logic.

**now, it is the theology-which-must-not-speak-it's-name.

TChem@16: Does anyone know if that weird anti-Semitism argument a common one among ID people? Because that was the point at which I started boggling.

This is a major point, apparently, in the odious new ID propaganda "documentary" Expelled: that Darwin is to blame for the Holocaust. So we should expect to see it become one of the major tropes for a while.

This is one of the best posts EVER!

It is a common notion that Nazi eugenics were inspired by Darwin's ideas - but only in the same sense that the Inquisition was inspired by Jesus. I am aware, of course, that Darwin campaigned against slavery and colonialism; would only that the Islamophobic likes of Samuel Harris would follow his fine example.

I actually read in a postcolonial studies book years ago that the Eyre atrocities in 19th century Jamaica were defended by artists like Ruskin and Carlyle and attacked by rationalists like Darwin and Mill, so no, I don't completely follow the postcolonial suspicion of reason. Atheists like Hitchens, Hirsi Ali and Harris, though, can not be said to be giving their ideas a good name.

And another thing. Most Muslim-majority countries teach evolution in their school system (though admittedly a lot of Muslim theologians have their own form of intelligent design). Those African countries which actually have a functioning school system, teach evolution. Latin American school systems teach evolution. Asian school systems teach evolution. And they have to, because otherwise their credentials won't be recognized in, ahem, the US. What exactly makes Middle America so special that they think they don't have to teach basic science?

Definitely the real kind of sincere stupid. Even Jesus' General breaks character now and again.

But I can see how this could be confusing. For some time, there's been rumors that Anne Coulter is really a liberal sleeper agent/long term undercover parody. The distinction,a t that poitn though becomes an Academic one. At a certain point, you either become what you mock or break character like JG or Steven Colbert.

#25 Sajia Kabir: What exactly makes Middle America so special that they think they don't have to teach basic science?

But you answered your own question: because it's Middle America.

I read half the first post and my alarms were screaming "raving lunatic nutbar".

And that's the lowest setting.

It went up a couple notches from by the time I got to the third post.

I didn't have time for a shower, so I stopped after that.

I think the thing is that parady skewers the thing being parodied. This guy is thrashing about with a sword and hacking at anything in reach that is not the the thing he would possibly be parodying.

That may or may not be an accurate definiton of parody. But either way, this guy is a four-alarm nut case.

Sajia @ 25... Atheists like Hitchens, Hirsi Ali and Harris, though, can not be said to be giving their ideas a good name.

They certainly don't speak for the likes of me.

definitely not parody.

Either nut, troll, or maybe fantasy writer trying out drug fueled plot (#5 and the Hitler stuff, that plot is worth stealing)

Would the Ark have required advanced materials to build? It doesn't seem on the face of it to be a particularly complex design.

When closed, it shielded the Israelites from the lethal radiation that is emitted from the Ark. That might just have meant it was made of lead.

For what it's worth, I'm with the crowd on this. The guy is completely serious, and not someone I'd risk turning my back on.

Poe's Law has struck again, although in a vaguely less religious context this time.

Still, it is creationism. Religion isn't too far away.

Xoper @ 24: Ceiling Cat Bible Project

If it need be said, the atheists Sajia mentioned at #25 don't speak for me, but Serge at #29 does.

I'm pretty certain this guy is actually Tony Zirkle.

I think he's real, and I think it's a bad idea to mention his name here.

He's a sociopathic, narcissistic troll and I wouldn't put it past him to Google up appearances of his name.

The only safe way out of this is to nuke the thread from orbit.

Larry 34: ZOMG! Srsly.

I'd say complete and utter nut.

Sajia Kabir #25:

Your postcolonial studies book was absolutely correct. Darwin, Huxley, and company were supporters of the Jamaica Committee formed to prosecute Edward John Eyre for the atrocities committed in Jamaica in 1865. Carlyle, Ruskin and other Romantics were supporters of Eyre, as was that good Xtian socialist Kingsley.

ethan @ 35... Mind you, we know that Sajia knows we're not one of those atheists.

don delny @ #22:

*weak version ID in a nutshell: If you already believe in God, then it is reasonable, and even "obvious" to conclude that the cool/nifty/orderly phenomena that you encounter by doing science illustrates how cool He is.

Since when does this rise to the level of intelligent design, no matter how weak? It seems perfectly consistent with Deism or Roman Catholicism to me.

Also, just a note: I used to hang out on ChristianForums.com often. Iva may be satire, but there are people out there that believe what he's saying.

Charismatics and Calvinists terrify me, especially when they're Creationists.

#17 Michael Martin: Whoops, I meant the Tabernacle. It's not the existence of the technology so much as the scale of processing that'd need to be happening. I'll have to consult with my bible and the back of an envelope tonight when I get home, because it's been a while. But I remember my BS alarm going off when I was reading about the various large and/or structural pieces that were supposedly solid precious metal.

Ancient metalworkers were generally smart enough to make large objects from a very thin sheet of metal, either alone or covering something else, because there just wasn't that much of the stuff around, and because it's HEAVY. (this guy is 6 inches tall according to the Met website, solid gold, and about as big a solid piece as you'll see. And that's Egypt, which had way more resources to exploit. And then I'm remembering some details of, but not the key Googleable words for, that huge stash of gold objects archaeologists found in Russia. I recall being struck by their delicacy--they covered a huge surface area but were incredibly thin.)

I'd be much more likely to buy that things were carved of stone or wood and coated with a thin hammered sheet or foil of those metals, which would be just as dazzling to behold, while requiring less than 1/1000 the resources. From there it's easy to exaggerate and write down that things were solid metal. Biblical literalists would have the same problem with that as with the earth taking more than 7 days to create, though.

Yeah, I don't see it as parody because, well, it's not funny. Parodies usually give it away by playing up the God worship in some funny way, but not here. Plus, also, I think it's not actually that easy to imitate that style of rantiness. The poster confuses things a bit by acknowledging that he's ranting, but I think that's not outside the bounds for a serious person to admit.

Also, breaking Godwin's law in a context where the spectre of evolution-leads-to-genocide has already been raised, even if it were parody, is in fact trolling. Even if it's parody. IMO.

#43

I know someone who says it couldn't be solid gold because over time it would have deformed so badly that it wouldn't be recognizable (not someone with an engineering/chemistry background though).

That it was wrapped in gold sheet makes sense to me.

Just ran the username through Google.

This particular nut has hit a couple of other threads on BoingBoing with the same kind of comments, not even relevant to the threads.

So: not parody. Nutcase.

#45: That's another thing I was thinking to check, because I can't remember where the respective parts were located. But then, there's the counterargument: "God helped hold them up. And, er, engineers caused the Black Plague, while we're at it." /parody

re 43: I just looked at Exodus 25/26, and I'm afraid I missed the part where it said anything was to be made of any solid metal. The ark it plainly states to be overlaid (the box) or "hammered work" (the cherubim).

I do ScienceBlogs - and the whole "Expelled" thing is a big topic over there right now as well.

This person isn't parodying it at all. The latest and greatest tactic among the ID-ers is to claim that they are the guardians of science. Meanwhile, all those who do things like painstaking, thoughtful and controlled research, and then subjecting their methods, data and results to the harsh court of peer review and public comment are not.

It's typical. Sad. But typical

He's definitely the real thing.

These different elements--the theist who feels himself to be badly outnumbered and cruelly oppressed, the creationist who feels unfairly excluded from the scientific debate just because he admits scriptural evidence, and the self-styped "common man" who burns with resentment at the condescension of mostly-imagined elites--combine to produce an angry, defensive, and bitter mind.

That kind of mind rots fast, and you can't miss the stink of it, nor can you fake it. People who try to parody it never manage to pack enough sneering hate into their writing. It might be that to create really good parody you have to, in some real way, love and understand the thing you're parodying. (Did Christopher Guest say something like that?) That kind of empathy might allow you to imagine what it is to love what someone else loves, but can a person capable of that kind of empathy imagine what it is to hate what someone else hates?

Here's what convinced me he's for real:

"You DEMAND it of creationists. Be willing to provide it. Put your money (actually, MY stolen tax money) where your big mouth is."

Oh yeah. He's for real. There's two resentments dressed with a sneer.

"And don't even get me started on Mass(church service) in Latin when nobody but lawyers/doctors speak it."

This is new to me. Has anyone else ever seen this before? I've never seen anti-catholicism connected with resentment of educated professionals who are imagined to be speaking latin to one another. Is this a common theme in such circles, or is this a more or less original behavior from the subject in question? To my amateur eye, this looks like another convincing indicator of the genuine article. It's easy to parrot the other guy's usual talking points, but much harder to really get into their heads and invent new stuff that fits their worldview.

"I can't spare the AIDS research any more cash... it's all been stolen by the IRS to pay for abortions and evolution research."

Here, again, I detect the stink of the real thing. That's 100% authentic resentment-bitterness-hate.

If everybody died before puberty, you'd laugh at some idiot who proposed the changes we've observed. In Noah's day, before water and death covered the whole earth, shortening lifespans by a factor of ten, people routinely lived almost a thousand years. Funny how no evos ever jump on that, huh?

Oh hell yes. I've never met this guy, but I bet you I could pick him out of a police lineup nine times out of ten. He's so crazy I'll be able to see the demons in his eyes.

Not only a nutcase, but an evangelical Protestant nutcase.

Has it produced the line about 'all the smart Catholics become priests and nuns'? (I heard that one once, about thirty years ago, from someone who was from what we'd now call a fundamentalist church. It was followed by remarks about how stupid the rest of the Catholics were and how they believed whatever they were told by the priests.)

Yuck. I feel like laundering my eyeballs.

I'm with the gang: not parody, entirely stupid and entirely serious. This guy believes he's the Last Sane Man on the Planet. Eeew.

There are days when I regret the Internet was invented.

Maybe we need to require passwords that are complete, correctly composed sentences.

And if you use a memorized Bible quote you get logged into a special Internet where everyone sounds just like you.

I say: Nutcase. Scary, scary nutcase.

And, HEY! Re: Middle America. I resemble that remark.

But: SOME of us believe in teaching science, and lobby accordingly!!!! SOME of our school districts teach evolution. SOME of our children are being inoculated against science abuse. I promise! Sorry about the rest of us.

I think it was somewhere on the Science blogs that one poster advanced the idea that Ann Coulter was writing parody, particularly when it came to her statements on evolution.

Now, Coulter's style is more polished than the guy in question here, but it's clear that they're both the real thing.

If you're going to do parody, do it like Stephen Colbert.

(When Cheers was on, I entertained the idea that Woody was putting them all on. I still think Harrelson was giving some subtle winks.)

There is something verging on the Gene Ray Time Cube vibe to this individual's ranting. Vehement nonsense. I almost respect how mind-meltingly absent of reason it is.

I want to call parody. I really do.

Given that the interwebz have no access criteria to meet... I'm going to have to say it's for real.

*sigh*

I just signed into a BoingBoing account...someone stop me from weighing in. Please.

Nutcase. If he's kidding, he's lived the role long enough to go native.

JK Richard: DNFTT; you'll just burn through your own jpy and not change a thing. Go do something that will make you happy and fulfilled instead.

#54 punkrockhockeymom: And, HEY! Re: Middle America. I resemble that remark.

Well, for my part, I lived in Middle America (if by that we mean the Midwest) for a few years and found most of the people I met there bright, educated, and pro-science, religious or no. (Of course that was in Iowa City... but I met a lot of people from other parts of the MW as well.)

I was simply referring to the part about "what gives them the right"... "them" being those who feel that creationism is good enough, and the thing that "gives them right" being their Middle American-ness, as defined by that same "them", which makes them into some sort of special case of Chosen Ones or something, who therefore have the right to declare that God's Word outweighs anything mere science can come up with.

Nobody can speak for God like America can speak for God.

Although you might recognize that formulation as something we have heard coming out of other geographical locations on the planet.

I liked the Midwest. I like other places better, but it's not a bad place overall.

I'm one of the ones who flagged the guy in BB, but try as I might, I can't see him as a parodist. It's not funny enough to be even a badly-executed parody. The anti-catholic rant was absurd, but when you're dealing with creos, that isn't necessarily much help.

I'm more inclined right now to see the commenter Evidence as a parody, except that I know some people genuinely are unable to picture simple geometrical relationships, such as the fall of sunlight and the relationship between the Earth and the Moon causing the phases of the Moon. I'm debating whether I should try to lead him through a simple demonstration of shadows using a lamp, a baseball and a golfball. Or just leave Xopher to patiently explain it....

NelC: I did. We'll see if it takes, or if I have to try again.

I recently talked to a creo (thank you! love it) who admitted that shared genes were evidence of common ancestry in humans, but denied it was evidence of common ancestry between humans and other species. Yeah. They really have abandoned logical thought.

Maybe 'Evidence' needs one of the items here.

"When Cheers was on, I entertained the idea that Woody was putting them all on. I still think Harrelson was giving some subtle winks."

what does this statement mean??

Byran @ 63 -

It seemed to me that Woody Harrelson was offering barely noticeable hints that the character of Woody was someone very smart who enjoyed coming off as unsophisticated. Like I said, it's probably just me.

I don't think you should be embarrassed for thinking that the real thing is actually a parody. That shows you have good faith. I often embarrass myself on the internet when I think a parody is the real thing. Then I get all outraged and upset and forward the thing around, only to discover it was a joke.

In this case, I think we've got internet crazy.

I also vote for sincere nutcase.

Y'know how there's a certain class of Internet argument that practically degrades into mutual ritual denunciation? The political hot-button topics all have a strong tendency to lean that way, but for some reason creationism arguments always do. I think it's because there are hardly any creationists with any sort of actual comprehension of evolutionary science, and most scientifically-minded people are weak on theology (actually, most everybody is weak on theology, whether they believe or not).

So you get people like Iva, who compile comments out of lists of pre-generated propaganda claims, and then the evolutionists are expected to rebut those claims, but since the claims have all been around for years, there are also ready-to-go counter-arguments, and the whole thing looks like people reading from a script, or perhaps a pair of dueling Eliza programs. It all looks like mechanized ideas have parasitized people's brains and forced their fingers to type them out, zombie-like, so they can propagate over the net.

I often wonder if this is why it was Richard Dawkins -- no stranger to these arguments -- who came up with the concept of memes.

#37 ::: Stefan Jones #37 I think he's real, and I think it's a bad idea to mention his name here.

I concur. Speculation on what his True Name is could lead to toxic results.

Complete nutter, devoid of any shred of sense, common or otherwise.

I'm going to go out on a limb here.

I think the guy's for real now, but that he was at some point in the past a dedicated troller in the SubGenius style. There's a rhythm in his writing that reminds me a lot of guys I saw in the '90s, who started off writing deliberate parody of televangelist style and kind of got sucked into the persona. Too many of them ended up becoming deranged ranters for real, thanks to a combination of the "you become what you do" thing and (I think) untreated medical problems.

I think he's real...he's posting the same stuff at the scientific american blog, which presumably doesn't attract nuanced satire the way BB might.

(Here's his profile over there, it links to various of his posts, all in the last couple of days).

I have to say, I really, really love his notion that dinosaurs were just small lizards such as we have today, that grew really big over the course of their lives. The kid in me is smiling ear to ear at the notion of catching a gecko and hiding it in the shed and feeding it up real good, until eventually mom and dad go back there to get a rake and find that I'm hiding a pet dinosaur. Robin James and Stephen Cosgrove probably already wrote that exact book, actually, except probably about a dragon instead of a dinosaur.

Kate Nepveu, 41,*

Since when does this rise to the level of intelligent design, no matter how weak? It seems perfectly consistent with Deism or Roman Catholicism to me.

Yes, you are exactly right! And that's how six or twelve years ago, when ID surfaced, it got otherwise sensible people to sign on.** The way it works is a simple magic trick; a cognitive error and a logical fallacy.

The cognitive error is simple: people really suck at seeing the world from other people's perspectives. Frex, generic Christian, hears about ID, can't imagine not believing in God, and BOOM! flips the premise without thinking (God is) and the conclusion (the stuff He made is cool).

Diagram:

Correct: Premise [God is] -> Conclusion [stuff shows how cool He is]

Incorrect: Conclusion [Universe is cool] -> Premise [God is]

(It's the hat trick of bad theology too! The incorrect model also substitutes works for faith.)

don

*btw, I'm a fan of the book log. Hi!

**and provolked great suspicion amongst the mainline denomination I belong to. I mean, people said it was a trojan horse for Creationism and fundamentalism. (Others said it was a trojan horse for Unitarianism and Catholicism, so your milage may vary. Anyway, not uncontroversial.) The folks I know who first signed on have retreated into embarrassed silence.

#71, Don Delny- yup, that is how it works. I was in the bar before a meal at a weekend away with people, when I picked up the newspaper, and noted out loud that they had printed a letter from some ID/ Creationist in response to one of my earlier ones, which then prompted me to make some pithy comments on their stupidity. One of the people there, an engineer (Yes, I know, spare us) in his 70's, a generally smart guy, but also religious, said something along the lines of

"Of course there had to be a designer, where did everything come from in the first place."

Gaahhhhh.

Fortunately I didn't say anything silly. But the point is that non-scientific ID is effectively the default position for a large number of believers, and this will bias many of them towards such a heap of junk as "expelled".

#59:

Nobody can speak for God like America can speak for God.

`I didn't say there was nothing BETTER,' the King replied. `I said there was nothing LIKE it.' Which Alice did not venture to deny.

Mary Dell @ 70: small lizards such as we have today, that grew really big over the course of their lives -- see Heinlein's The Star Beast, of course.

What's scary to me isn't that he's sincere and not a parodist, which I also believe. It's that (at least in the 2 messages my stomach allowed me to read) he seems to have generated a lot of his rhetoric by simply inverting comments made to creationists: "you don't have any experimental evidence", "it's religion, not science", etc. As if "the same to you and twice over" was a logical and persuasive argument. No question, he's a fruitbat.

#75:

Sir, I would have you not denigrate the noble fruitbat by such a comparison.

Good day to you.

How about just batshit insane? No insult to guano intended.

Bruce Baugh wrote pretty much exactly what I was going to.

I think it's a case of "Ha Ha, Only Serious". He's sincere, he's a lunatic, he really hates what he says he hates, but he's also got a level in his own head where he knows, or used to know that he's consciously trolling, which he can retreat to and cackle "Fooled you all!" like an old fashioned villain if the flametides are licking a bit too high.

Picture the sad ruin of a once-great troll tearing at the very planks of the bridge he's sitting under because he can no longer tell them from the goats he used to try to lure, and once they are gone, tearing angrily at his own hair, not noticing as he devours chunks of his own brain.

He's evil and he's for real.

But -- God bringth good out of evil.

Coz now ai haz Boreded Ceiling Cat makinkgz Urf n stuffs.

Depressed most of day, this helped change the emotional landscape considerably. Thanks!

Love, C.

#78 Jo Walton: ...he really hates what he says he hates, but he's also got a level in his own head where he knows, or used to know that he's consciously trolling, which he can retreat to and cackle "Fooled you all!"

Sounds a little like Gollum.

Loon, very possibly with either serious psychological or substance problems. Isn't taken seriously, desperately resents not being taken seriously, is striking out against what he thinks of as the signifiers of the people who think they're better than he is.

Undoubtedly truly believes that no-one listens to him in the real world because he's too afire with the purity of the revealed truth. Maybe half-tells himself he's bouleversing the pompous people. Is wrong.

I'm siding with the "Troll" group.

Parody, it is not. Or, if it's parody, it's unsuccessful. Trolling however, isn't about making fun of the person you pretend to be. It's making fun of the people who believe that you are what you pretend to be. Trolling in discussions that are (currently) as intractable as ID, is pretty much the application of firearms to school of cooper-mediated fish. Everybody is fully convinced that the other side does not have redeeming qualities, so it's very easy to display yourself with none, and be believed.

I am voting troll as a utilitarian though. It's not that I have evidence, it's just that if he's not a troll, the human race is that little bit worse than I would otherwise believe. The more respect for humanity I can save, the better!

Here's a little good news on a related topic:

Texas board rejects ID master's program.

Summary: The Institute for Creation Research (which is based in Dallas) had submitted a proposal to offer an online master's-degree program aimed at turning out science teachers. The Texas Board of Higher Education turned them down flat.

My opinion of Texas just went up several notches.

Iva is a troll. Comes in there swinging, bringing in Hitler, genetic supremacy, taxes, you name it. Every possible hot-button issue with BoingBoingers, he/she gleefully presses in the first couple minutes.

There are lots of people out there who would basically agree with much of what Iva says. But they have no reason to spend arbitrarily large amounts of time posting over and over and over again at a forum like BoingBoing.

I don't think it matters if he's a troll or a fanatic. Any sufficiently advanced extremism is indistinguishable from trolling.

I think there's a difference between stupidity and foolishness, and I think that trolls like Iva are more foolish than stupid. He's smart enough to learn to reason, but refuses to do so because, quite literally, it goes against his religion.

They say religion is a personal thing, and that's especially true in cases like this. I think that hese kind of people selectively embrace bits and pieces from their bibles, their churches, and whatever other sources appeal to them and then internalize them, wrap them in the infallibility of their own religion, and then go out and preach.

I think he means it, and living in a semi-Southern city, I hear similar things more frequently than I'd want. Have I ever told y'all that when I put a Darwin fish on my van, it was taken off overnight? The next one, too, and I don't plan to stencil it on.

Mary Dell @ 70: Your comment reminds me of this car ad.

Steve @64: ok, I've gotten that impression as well. Indeed it was Woody that I used to base my day to day personality on, until I got tired of the maintenance

and interoperability issues and moved to Homer Simpson because that was the one everybody else was using at the time.

Marilee: Maia's mother lost four, or five, Kerry lawn signs before she gave up.

Right now she has one for the challenger to Drier (R Calif.). I don't doubt for a second that you are losing Darwin fish.

Any sufficiently accurate parody is indistinguishable from the real thing.

There's a part of me that wants very much for it to be a parody. Such a master parodist as it would take to pull off so accurate a portrayal of a slightly literate, desperately ignorant crazyationist troll would surely have a punchline worthy of what has already been posted just waiting for the right moment.

Imagine for a moment how awesome such a punchline would have to be. Mmmmm... punchline. I want it to be fake, but I doubt that it is.

Jo Walton @ 78: "Picture the sad ruin of a once-great troll tearing at the very planks of the bridge he's sitting under because he can no longer tell them from the goats he used to try to lure, and once they are gone, tearing angrily at his own hair, not noticing as he devours chunks of his own brain."

That's...a remarkably sad and compelling image.

He's a zombie, with what used to be his conscious mind taken over by the evolution denial ruleset. He quite likely invited it in to begin with, and fairly recently at that - I'd be tempted to say he's just been through a crisis and a dramatic conversion, and who's still trying to demonstrate his faith to himself.

He's obviously writing mostly to show off and to have fun pwnz0ring the thread, but that kind of trolling doesn't preclude sincere religious belief - it's the same dynamic that leads to a lot of witnessing. Public preaching & ranting is basically not about your hearers, it's about doing what you feel you have to do in order to be a good person - sometimes especially if that involves courting trivial martyrdom. I've seen a fair few fundamentalists ranting on buses, and standing up on a crowded East London bus and saying that if you follow Islam you are following Satan is... not calculated to gain you any sympathy.

Whilst it does look like parody, I think that's because he's having so much fun, and is so sure he's Right, that he can afford to throw in a few winks and nudges and flourishes.

Of course, it's still showing evidence of the underlying layer of complete batshit craziness, but then the poor guy can't help that. Some people, sadly, really are just completely batshit crazy even without the help of evolution denial, and when you carefully scrape the nuts off your sundae you find it's maple pecan all the way down.

Creationists haven't spent enough time observing nature. (Unlike Charles Darwin.)

You don't even have to study wildlife to understand natural selection -- just go to a singles bar on Friday night, and watch biology in action.

:)

Everybody is fully convinced that the other side does not have redeeming qualities, so it's very easy to display yourself with none, and be believed.

Nonsense! I believe that >95% of the other side is misinformed, mislead, and badly (and I mean that morally) educated. (The proportion who post to the net in such arguments is significantly lower than that). But I don't write off the majority of them.

And with this guy (and Ann Coulter) there needs to be a version of Clarke's Law: Any significantly in-character trolling is indistinguishable from advocacy.

Scott@82: You write, Everybody is fully convinced that the other side does not have redeeming qualities, so it's very easy to display yourself with none, and be believed. I disagree with this, a lot. I think that the spread of this idea is very convenient for those who wish to engage in unrestrained abuse of their opponents, and that a lot of people will nod along with it unthinkingly, but that it really isn't so.

The fact is that most people don't act like they actually think it's true. They may well think some idea an opponent holds is altogether worthless, but on some level they care that the other person get the chance to learn better. That's how most debates get started - not with crap-flinging unbounded, but with a genuine interest in helping others see more of the truth. That's just the opposite of seeing them as lacking redeeming qualities. It actually takes a whole lot of isolation and reinforcement to get most people to really go along with demonization in more than a superficial kind of way - in the case of the Republican attack machine, for instance, it took decades to get rolling and then they couldn't actually hold anything like a majority of the American public for more than a few years of being in charge.

This isn't to say that humanity at large has no big flaws, but we're better as a species and as a bunch of communities than those who revel in attack would like the rest of us to believe.

Terry 91: Tell her to put on gloves, slice open a habanero, and rub the cut edge all along the edge of the sign and whatever she's using to stick it into the ground. While she's doing it, she should say "I am but an instrument of karma."

A.R. 95: Yes, I've often observed that since stupid people outbreed smart people, and pretty people outbreed ugly people, we're breeding for stupid, pretty people (or pretty stupid people if you prefer).

It takes only a brief walk in Manhattan on a summer evening to see that this unintentional eugenics program is far advanced. (As a smart, ugly person, this trend makes me very nervous, as you can imagine.)

Scott (#82): Everybody is fully convinced that the other side does not have redeeming qualities, so it's very easy to display yourself with none, and be believed.

I don't think so. I certainly don't assume it, out of hand when someone shows up (on whatever topic). It may be the majority (even the vast majority) of those who rant on the subject (esp. on the net) fall into this category, but; by and large, I think even those are treated with the idea they are honest actors.

Sad experience may lead one to think such forbearance wll be short-lived, but I don't think most who believe such things are so convinced of the intellectual iniquity of those on the other side.

Mostly, I think they are amazed they haven't seen/been shown, the evidence to realise how wrong they are.

Xopher: I've thought of such things (I want to get some tanglefoot netting and place it around the parkway.

The essential pepper oil is nice, in that it's a delayed reaction; so escalation is less likely.

On the whole, she being a better person than I, in the way you think me better than thee, trusts to actual karma.

Me, I'm not so sure, and may do such things for her.

don delny @ #71:

Hi to you too.

I see what you're saying, but "weak ID" seems like a much too broad way of describing it--it's not any form of ID at all, but rather a way of thinking that can lead to it but *also* can lead to lots of other things. In that respect, it's not a parallel to weak/strong atheism at all and is misleading and potentially insulting.

Terry, if you do it make sure you tell her you did, so she'll wear gloves when she takes it down!

Kate Nepveu, 101,

I see what you're saying, but "weak ID" seems like a much too broad way of describing it--it's not any form of ID at all, but rather a way of thinking that can lead to it but *also* can lead to lots of other things. In that respect, it's not a parallel to weak/strong atheism at all and is misleading and potentially insulting.

I completely agree. In fact, I was hoping that someone here knew of a compact way to express what I was describing as weak ID - I feel fairly confident that the Jesuits had a nice Latin phrase for it, but I don't know where to look to find it. I'd really like to get away from describing it as weak-ID also, because as aforementioned it is misleading and embarrassing.

Anyway, I picked the phrase "weak ID" to draw a distinction between the folks I knew who would have described themselves as ID-ers (and some still might) who assumed that it wasn't repackaged Creationism, (and were pretty chagrined to figure out it lumped them in with the nutters.) Many of the current strong form ID types could be prodded back into the weak form pretty easily, just by pointing out the inconsistencies with Christian theology - not that you normally find these folk participating in the typical evolution-creationism flamewars.

don delny: The question, I think, is one of "design." Of one thinks the present state of the world was the desired end-state, then one is engaging in a form of ID.

If, however, the thought is more, Something set it all in motion, and this is what came up (avoiding the onotological questions of how free the future can be if the Divine is aware of all is, was, or ever will be), then one isn't engaging in ID, but is rather merely a theist.

Xopher @ 98

(As a smart, ugly person, this trend makes me very nervous, as you can imagine.)

*shudder* Kornbluth showed us the end result in "The Marching Morons." No, it ain't pretty.

Slight tangent: am I right in surmising that the singles scene is one of the reasons why the standard of beauty in the US is becoming the porn star?

Bruce Cohen (Speaker to Managers) #105 wrote "Slight tangent: am I right in surmising that the singles scene is one of the reasons why the standard of beauty in the US is becoming the porn star?"

When did this happen? (That's a serious question.)

Re: Marching Morons. You realise, of course, that the heritability of intelligence is more complex than "Dumb people breed dumb kids; smart people breed smart kids"? Rather, there's great variation observed with a regression towards the mean, so that dumb people can have smart kids and smart people, dumb ones, with both sets tending towards average intelligence.

As to beauty, some of that is down to modern medicine and diet, leading to fewer developmental glitches arising during growth. Otherwise, the genetic component of physical beauty is probably as complicated as the genetic component of intelligence... probably is, considering that our organ of beauty recognition is the brain.

So I'd imagine that there's quite likely to be the same mix of smart, dumb, handsome, and plain in future generations as there are now, and as there were 20,000 years ago.

I have moments of thinking that "The Marching Morons" has been almost as pernicious an influence on fandom as "Slan".

I couldn't even get past the first. I think my allergy to teh stoopid has been worsening lately.

#95 ::: A.R.Yngve :::

Creationists haven't spent enough time observing nature. (Unlike Charles Darwin.

In anticipation of "two Darwin anniversaries next year — his 200th birthday and the 150th of his world-changing book, “The Origin of Species.”" the New York Botanical Gardens have done a 33 stop tour replicating as many of Darwin's botanical researches as they could fit into the 250 acre place. It looks splendid, and we shall surely attend.

Visitors who enter the exhibition through the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory will encounter a replica of a room in Darwin’s house, designed so they can look through the window, as he did, to a profusion of plants and bright flowers: hollyhocks, flax and of course primroses, what Todd Forrest, the garden’s vice president for horticulture, calls “a typical British garden.” On a table stands a tray holding quills, brushes, sealing wax and tweezers, the kinds of simple tools Darwin used to conduct his world-shaking research.

Darwin grew the flowers not just for their own sake, Mr. Forrest said, but as subjects for observation and experiment, work he carried out in his home laboratory and greenhouses, on workbenches like those in the exhibition. The work displayed on the benches is typical of studies Darwin made of pollination, how plants grow, even what happens when a carnivorous plant devours an insect. Orchids on display remind visitors of the varieties Darwin studied, and how his observations and dissections of their blooms led him to conclude that particular species were pollinated by particular species of insects, a conclusion later research confirmed.

The whole story and dates, etc. are here.

Love, C.

#106 ::: Fragano Ledgister :::

Bruce Cohen (Speaker to Managers) #105 wrote "Slight tangent: am I right in surmising that the singles scene is one of the reasons why the standard of beauty in the US is becoming the porn star?"

When did this happen? (That's a serious question.

When cosmetic surgery got to be so normal that even 12 year olds have it -- nose jobs along with braces, in small town America, and escalated from there. Web cams and the sex-positive 'feminist' 4th wavers helped greatly by buying into the silly idea that being a stripper or a prostitute was empowering, and giving blowjobs upon request was totally cool -- and empowering.

This got started in the 1st Reagan term, of course.

Love, C.

I am reminded of Borges' "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote." Either Iva is Cervantes, or Iva is Pierre Menard; it's a quixotic achievement regardless.

In any case, I've met (mostly in the internet sense) a number of people easily as wacko on the subject of evolution as Iva Biggrudge. I don't think (from evidence of other beliefs they express) that they are parodists.

#105 Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers): Slight tangent: am I right in surmising that the singles scene is one of the reasons why the standard of beauty in the US is becoming the porn star?

Is there such a thing as a "standard of beauty in the US"?

Others can speak for other times and locations and orientations, I guess, but here in NYC the standard of beauty in the East Village is the Scruffy Hipster, in Chelsea it is the Worked-out Gym Rat, in the Financial District it is the Pin-Striped Suit, on the Upper Westside it is the Young Professional and/or the Hot Latino and/or the Columbia University College Student, in Williamsburg it is the Indie Musician and/or Filmmaker.

And even in such small samples as those, I am speaking merely in generalities and clichés.

Bruce, #105: I'm more inclined to blame the fashion industry myself. They've pretty much led the way in every wave of change to the "American standard" since at least the 1940s.

Constance Ash #111: Surely, the demand for cosmetic surgery goes back well before that. And sex-positive feminism can't bear that much of the blame for pressure on teenage girls to give blowjobs (I have a feeling that there are other causes for that, including a lack of real sex education). I think you're conflating a number of things here, many of them coming from the right.

When I lived in rural eastern Kentucky in the 1990s, I was struck by the number of places that provided tanning beds.

Xopher @98, Bruce @105, NelC @107, have you ever seen the film Idiocracy? I don't think I've read "The Marching Morons", but it sounds like it might have been the seed of the screenplay. OTOH, the basic idea isn't uncommon.

NelC, I think the problem that is worrying people is that on top of the 'dumb' having more offspring, there's a lot of cultural reinforcing of dumbness and disrespect for smartness — 'elite' and 'elitism' has been an insult in Australia for a couple of decades at least, tho' it seems to have a patchy application, sometimes money, sometimes intellect or artistic tendencies. (There's an implicit linking of money with the other two, yet statistics show the 'intellectual' and 'artistic' professions tend to be lower-income ones.)

Iva Biggrudge makes me howl with laughter. She can't be natural, ID, surely. But then again where I come from, they do say, "there's knowt so queer as folk", so maybe she's real but normal.



The answer is in the Turing test, surely. Is it possible to distinguish through their conversation between a machine and a human being with his brain switched off. The answer might be that it depends whether the machine has been preprogrammed to believe the book of Genesis.

re standards of beauty: It's possible that mass, visual, media; at the level of saturation, are making a more homogenous sense of "pretty.", but I doubt it.

As to the various stripes Michael Weholt describes, those sound more like trappings, than body-types, so it's possible that all of the people doing that are attempting to look much the same when unclothed 9(with the exception of group/philosophy markers like tatoos and body jewelry).

On the subject of Darwin, The Darwin Project Online reported that they were slammed last week with more than 7 million hits a day, and something like a quarter million copies of Origin of Species were downloaded.

That was my morning whoot yesterday (it's true, I was bouncing with glee as I went in to get my coffee), which was followed last night by the new lizard in Croatia.

The world is not yet run out of wonders.

Regarding the difference between parody and stupidity, I present Edward Current on evolution:

Intelligent Design Really Is Being Expelled!

Creation Science Must Be Taken Seriously!

Science Is Wrong ... Only God Knows The Truth

People Are Not Animals! (and evolution never happened)

The Atheist Delusion

Wow. I hope you get paid well to read all that.

Constance Ash #111: The middle-school blow job parties you're talking about are not sex positive. And I don't think anyone has ever argued that being a dancer or a prostitute is always empowering; only that it doesn't have to be shameful. I'm getting the impression that there are some misunderstandings here. And I'll tell you ahead of time that any argument that it's not OK to be a stripper or a prostitute is going to make me forcefully angry. One of my closest friends stripped her way out of living in (and raising her little sister in) a car, and my roommate has often used escorting as a way to get out of dire financial straits, and that is fine.

"I can sell my body if I wanna" is the lyric, not "You can make me sell my body if you wanna".

....aaaand I already apologize for my tone there. Sorry.

I can't tell if those are parodies, or not.

It probably didn't help that I didn't notice I had two running at the same time; so it sounded even more bizarre.

That whole riff on the sun is not a star... wow. If that's serious, then I'm croggled.

If it's not, the comments which don't get it are funny as all get out.

wright @ 119... Science Is Wrong ... Only God Knows The Truth

She blinded me with Science!

#103 ::: don delny

I picked the phrase "weak ID" to draw a distinction between the folks I knew who would have described themselves as ID-ers (and some still might) who assumed that it wasn't repackaged Creationism

Mmmph. That's a little different than what I understood above; in that circle of the Venn diagram I have less trouble with it, if it's referring to people who actu